Ohio Trip | October 2019

We spent 11 days traveling in October to Vancouver and Ohio.  We planned a trip back to Ohio at the end of October to see our new nephew Pierce around 3 months old, and before Todd’s sister Amy went back to work from maternity leave.  We happened to be in Ohio in August when Pierce was born, so this time we can see him much bigger and more interactive! 

We left on Saturday 10/26.  Our flight was delayed by two hours in Nashville, so we didn’t get into Cleveland until 10:30 PM.  We watched Ohio State beat Wisconsin on YouTube TV on the iPad at the airport.

On Sunday 10/27 we just hung out, because it was rainy there.  We got to have lunch at CoreLife Eatery.  I helped Amy & Luke with some financial planning as far as budgeting, retirement, college funds, etc.  It was very productive for being a rainy day!

On Monday 10/28 we had a very full day.  In the morning we drove to the Goodyear Blimp hangar at Wingfoot Lake, Ohio.  My father-in-law Tim is contracting at Goodyear and arranged a special tour of the hangar and the Wingfoot One Blimp for us!  It was a guided tour with one of the pilots of the blimp. 

We got to learn the history of the Goodyear Blimps, including involvement in WWII and blimps as part of the submarine fleet in the Navy.  It was quite interesting. 

This is one of the blimps that you see at sporting events!

The aerial camera is mounted in the front of the gondola, below the nose.

There’s a whole rack of AV equipment for broadcasting the images to the networks for the events.

A view of the blimp cockpit.

After the tour, we drove to the Goodyear headquarters in Akron, where we got signed in as Tim’s visitors.  They are very secretive at Goodyear HQ.  We got signed in and they put stickers on our phones to cover both the front and back cameras so we couldn’t take photos while there.  Tim treated us to the really awesome cafeteria there for lunch, and we got to visit the offices where he works. 

In the afternoon we started cooking for our Very Ghoulish Halloween Dinner!  Before the trip, Todd’s sister Amy planned for us to cook an entire dinner made of ghoulish things to celebrate Halloween.  It was all hands on deck as we prepared the extravaganza! 

I made these Crescent Mummy Dogs!

Amy made these spider cookies.

Todd got up early before the blimp tour so he could make this brain strawberry cheesecake!

My mother-in-law Sylvia made this spaghetti head with “eyeballs”.  The noodles are made of black beans and actually very good!  The texture was just right.  Not too soggy, just chewy enough.

So the idea was to make an entire human body of food items.  My brother-in-law Luke made the yummy ribs by sous vide and then grilling.  Get it, ribs?  He also grilled up some sausages to look like intestines.

We had some chicken legs (as legs), and some mashed potatoes and green beans.

Some more views of this ghoulish dinner.

It turned out so fun and also Pinterest-worthy!  Amy got to check this off her Halloween bucket list, ha ha.  The family that eats together, stays together!

We were supposed to fly back on Tuesday 10/29, but Southwest had flight cancellations and delays out of Denver, and our plane couldn’t make it to Cleveland for our flight out.  The delay would cause us to miss our connecting flight in Phoenix, so we booked flights for Wednesday at 8am to Atlanta, then San Diego.  But it happens that Tuesday was Luke’s birthday, so we got to celebrate with him with dinner out at Kingfish! 

Some other things… Noodle’s cousin Morton is a 24 lb Maine Coon!  I could barely hold him, he’s so big, LOL.

And the fall foliage is just so pretty.  Something we don’t see in SoCal.

And… looks like Sylvia & Todd have their hands full with the kids, ha ha.

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I’m Back

I haven’t blogged for about four months due to technical issues with Open Live Writer’s interface with Blogger.  I HATE the Blogger web interface, so blogging was no longer fun for me and I gave up.  I kept checking Github threads to see if someone was kind enough to volunteer his/her time to rewrite Open Live Writer to fix the issues, and lo and behold last Friday when I checked the thread, someone named Nick Vella did!  So now I’m back to blogging, except I’m still considering migrating my blog to self-hosted Wordpress so I never have these issues again.  But that would require research and lots of work, and learning the technical details on my part. 

Todd and I are doing really well, and I am personally doing well! 

Here are some bigger things that happened while the blog was dormant.

• I started reading and watching videos about skincare and have been really interested in it for the last three months.  My 49-year old face looks more glowing and wrinkle-free than before! 

• We watched Game of Thrones’ final season, Season 8.  Sigh.  We loved that show.
• We discovered a couple of new-to-us Chinese restaurants:  Szechuan Chef and Shan Xi Magic Kitchen.
• We turned in the Kia Soul electric car (lease was up), and we purchased a used 2017 BMW i3 electric car for Todd.

• Todd played an entire season of intramural softball at Illumina.  They lost in the first round of playoffs.  I went to 4-5 games.

• Todd went to Trailhead DX in San Francisco.
• We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary!

• We took a week off in July and staycationed here in SoCal.  We went on a bay cruise.  Spent a day up in San Clemente.  Went to Coronado.  Learned to make Chinese dumplings at home.  Had breakfast out.  Went wine tasting.  We did most of the activities with a Groupon and it cost less than 50% of the regular price!  Woo!

• We went to Nashville, TN for Con of Thrones!

• I went to jury duty.
• I drove to the US-Mexico border for my Global Entry interview.  I’m now a Global Entry cardholder, so I can go through the expedited customs line when I return from a foreign country.  And Global Entry includes TSA Precheck, which I enjoyed immensely when we flew to Ohio.  Two minutes through security!
• We flew to Ohio to spend a few days with Todd’s family.  Todd’s sister Amy had her second baby while we were there!  AND Todd attended his 30th high school reunion!  The funniest thing was when a guy he knew in high school said in front of everyone, “Now what guy our age still has a full head of hair like that??!”  Apparent Todd does.

• My sister Joyce and I put together a 75th birthday party for our dad in LA.  She and my nephew Andrew flew into LA and we drove up.  We had a Chinese banquet at Newport Seafood and invited several of my dad’s friends.  We had two big tables of people to celebrate my dad.  It was grand.

So now we’re caught up!

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Birthday Month + Being Thankful

Happy March!  March is my birthday month and it’s exciting and a little terrifying at the same time, at my age!  Of course I try to remain positive about aging, but the train of time doesn’t stop and keeps on rolling.  In honor of my birthday month, I made an appointment for my annual wellness check with my doctor.  I had been putting it off since December… for stupid reasons.  One of them being that I probably put on a few pounds since my wellness visit in December 2017.  That time my doctor did mention that I’ve put on a few pounds the last three years.  I had promised myself in my head that I would eat better and exercise more, neither of which happened in the last six months.  So I guess I felt a little bit ashamed and disappointed in myself.  But I realized that’s not a good reason to not get my annual wellness exam, so here we are.

Because of this being my birthday month and the upcoming visit to the doctor later this month, I thought it would be a good month to kick off a regular exercise plan again.  Starting today I’m doing the six-week Jessica Smith Walk Strong DVD series again. 

I did this program twice during my “Summatical” in 2017 and really loved it.  I talked about it in-depth here on my blog.  I love Jessica Smith’s approachable and can-do encouraging style.  And for the most part the DVD series isn’t too difficult, although some days are more challenging than others.  I like how well-rounded it is, with a mix of cardio, strength, HIIT, stretching, etc.

I’m also going to try to fit in as much yoga as I can.  Yoga with Adriene has a calendar of yoga videos up for March.

And you can find her March playlist on YouTube here. 

As I get older, I realized that when I think of things I’m thankful for, there are more and more things that I’m thankful for because I DON’T have them.  Things like health issues, health issues of loved ones, big heavy financial burdens, career stress and worries, etc.  It’s kind of weird to be thankful for things you don’t have, but because I have experienced some heartbreak and stressful things in the past, I know full well that they could happen again.  (Those things being my mom’s illness and eventual passing, and Todd having a mysterious cerebral spinal fluid leak that kept him bedridden for two months.)  Over the two years that these two things happened, I thought I made it through rather unscathed until three months after my mom passed away.  One day in May 2007, I had a sudden anxiety attack while running on the treadmill.  I was not particularly stressed or anything, so it came on suddenly and I was so surprised.  My body just decided it held up long enough under duress, and it broke.  I went on medication for a year to control the anxiety attacks.  Those things happen.  And I’m fully aware they could happen again.  Therefore I’m always thankful for the calm and boring days.

I love the first photo in this blog post, as well as this one.  Noodle “helping” Todd with the puzzle, ha ha.  Too cute!

Todd has been really busy this past week at work.  He worked long hours and also the entire weekend.  His months’ long project at work went live as of 6pm last night.  He is on call for “hypercare” for any urgent issues that come up with the new system going live.  On early Sunday morning he got called at 3am and got up and worked from 3-5am.  He’s so excited that the project has finally gone live though.  This is the project that kicked off when he went to India last year. 

Fun things this past week:

On Wednesday night we went to check out a newly opened Taiwanese shaved ice dessert place that opened in San Diego called Meet Fresh. 

This is the kind of street dessert that I ate in Taiwan as a kid.  Grass jelly, taro balls, shaved ice with syrup or milk, red beans, etc.  (I lived in Taiwan until I was nine, when we moved to the USA.)  It really brings back the childhood dessert memories!

On Thursday I went to lunch at Rice Chicken to check out their Korean fried chicken.  It’s brand-new and soft opening for them.  I had the regular fried chicken with garlic chili dip.  I thought it was decent but not as good as Furaido Chicken inside the Atlas Market.

And a funny thing happened later that evening.  I was checking out the Instastory of a local account that I follow, and he had gone to Rice Chicken that same afternoon for lunch.  I thought, oh, what a coincidence!  Then I looked closely and look who is sitting there on the left side of his photo?  It’s ME!!!

I thought that was hilarious and messaged his account.  Imagine you’re just perusing things on Instagram and find yourself in someone else’s Instastory, LOL!

Todd had to work on Saturday, but we met up for lunch at Tofu House.  It was a rainy day and we love going to Tofu House on rainy or cold days for some reason.  It was delicious, as usual.

Yesterday I made a cream clay cleansing balm, just for fun.  It has coconut oil, grapeseed oil, castor oil, emulsifying wax, stearic acid, vitamin E, kaolin clay, vanilla FO, and valencia orange EO. When it set up it has a balm texture. Smells like a coconut orange creamsicle. It’s a solid oil facial cleanser. The emulsifying wax allows the oils to rinse cleanly off the skin.  I tried it last night and also made Todd use it.  I really like it!  And I LOVE the smell.  I put this up on Facebook yesterday for an edition of “Food or Skincare?”, because a lot of bath & body or skincare things I make look like creamy food, LOL.

I’ve gone done the rabbit hole of reading about alpha hydroxy acids (glycolic acid, fruit acid, lactic acid), niacinamide, hyaluronic acid, panthenol, hydrolyzed silk proteins, etc.  It’s really fun and I’m learning a lot!

That’s all for today!  If you haven’t noticed, I am blogging on Mondays and Thursdays now.  It is a good amount of blogging to aim for these days, and I’ve got them set up on my Google calendar.  Come back Thursday for my thoughts on being a newbie first-time housewife!

And just because Noodle looks so cute in this photo.  He got tuckered out after “helping” Todd with the puzzle.

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The Sky is Always the Bluest After The Rain

We’ve had a LOT of rain the last few weeks in San Diego.  Last week we even had hail.  There’s been tons of snow in the mountains near us, only an hour away.  But on Saturday Todd & I went for a walk at the coast and it was the clearest as it gets in San Diego, which is very clear and very blue!

It always makes me feel so great when we walk by the ocean.  It makes me feel super grateful to live here.

On the making front this week, I made a whipped shea butter body butter, just for experimenting with ingredients and formulation.  It’s made with shea butter, safflower oil, isopropyl myristate (to cut the oily feel and make it feel smooth), vitamin E oil, and lemon, orange, and grapefruit essential oils (but not at the amount that would cause photosensitivity).  It feels and smells great. 

I also made 25 candles for a custom label order.  I’ve never made 25 candles at once before, so I timed myself every step of the way so I could see how efficient I could be, ha ha.  This was the “prep all the glass jars and wick them” stage.

This was 2.5 hours later, after pouring all the candles.  They’re setting/curing.  They are scented in Sea Salt & Orchid and smell REALLY good!

While I worked on this candle order, I discovered the “Songs To Sing in the Shower” playlist on Spotify.  It is soooo good!  I literally danced my way through the candlemaking, LOL.  So joyous!

My nephew Andrew has a channel on YouTube called “Rogue Films”.  He had a video he made go viral last week and he texted us to tell us.  (It has over half a million views now!) So Todd and Noodle watched the video together.  I guess it became some sort of meme?  I have no idea what the kids like these days!

Speaking of Noodle, he is loving the sunshine that has returned to San Diego.

Sideways sleeping on his infinity bed.

Todd got to play Mozart and Mahler classical pieces with his musician friends on Saturday.  They get together from time to time to play together, just for fun.  I went and recorded a bunch of videos for him.

Every time I hear him play, I’m in awe of his talent, but more so his hard work.  He practices piano a lot, almost daily, after dinner.  He also plays trumpet in a brass group at work during lunch on Mondays.  They are going to play songs from “The Greatest Showman”.  Which, by the way, we watched for the 2nd time on Saturday night.  It’s even better the second time around.  So now I’ve been listening to the soundtrack all day on Spotify today.

Todd continued to celebrate his birthday this weekend, because several of his “free birthday food” coupons were expiring.  On Friday night we went to Burger Lounge so he could get his free milk shake.

Then on Sunday we went to brunch at Miguel’s Cocina so he could use his $10 off $30 birthday coupon.  They also gave him a free birthday mud pie and sang to him!

I had the carne asada benedict and it was delicious.  But what I really go to Miguel’s for is their cheese queso dip with chips, LOL.

I’ve been reading through Marie Rayma’s book “Make It Up”.  It is sooooo awesome!  I’m excited to try some of the formulas for DIY foundation, blush, lipstick, eyeshadows, etc.  The idea that I can custom make cosmetics for myself that matches my skin tone exactly, and also make colored cosmetics to my liking, is very exciting to me!  Especially since cosmetics is a category of products that’s marked WAAAAY up in retail sales, to pay for the marketing.  I have a feeling that fairly soon, I’m going to end up with lots of little jars of DIY makeup.  So fun!

I have already talked about Atlas Market in a recent blog post, but I went there today and got our whole week’s produce for $8.74! 

I got:

3.3 LBS of beets = $1.09
2.82 LBS of papaya = $2.79
3.87 LBS of naval oranges = $0.77
1.75 LBS of fuji apples = $1.21
1.9 LBS of green beans = $0.94
2 jalapeno peppers = $0.32
4 tomatillos = $0.48
Bag of bok choy = $0.85
2 bunches of cilantro = $0.29

Total $8.74

I think I mis-weighed some items, because it looks like I got way more than I needed.  I think the scales in the store may have been in kilograms, LOL.  But anyway, that means I could have only paid like $6 for all the produce that I needed.  That’s just incredible!  Seriously when I wheel the cart out of this place, I'm so giddy like I just stole some food! Local friends, you absolutely NEED to go to Atlas Market for produce and fruits!  It's an international market with a food hall, with emphasis on Korean and Persian food. Tons of other Asian and Middle Eastern food. They make announcements in English, Persian, Korean, and Chinese, LOL. In the food hall they have Korean fried chicken, which is soooooo good. And there's a Persian Bakery too. Basically I want to live there!

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